The facsimile (or fax) machine, a descendant of telegraphic imagers devised in the 1840s, first ascended to widespread use in the 1980s and today stands along side the telephone as a common, if not essential, tool of daily commerce. Recent years have witnessed the marriage of the fax machine to computer networking technology, such as the Internet, to define a new family of imaging devices—known as digital-image senders. These devices allow users to scan a hard copy of a document, and send the resulting digital image data via a communications network to any capable receiving device on the network.
One problem that the present inventors recognized with these devices is that they do not provide a convenient way for users to add user-specific information to an image sent by these digital image senders. In fact, conventional digital-image senders generally require users to actually change the hardcopy images before scanning if they want to make changes, such as adding personalized notes and other information.
Accordingly, the present inventors have recognized a need for digital-image senders that provide users convenient options for changing or editing image data prior to sending.